The present invention is directed to veterinary care and, more particularly, to veterinary delivery systems and methods of delivering effective agents to animals.
Effective veterinary care is very important to animal owners as well as the rest of society. Many people own household pets, such as dogs and cats, and often become emotionally attached to those pets. Other animals, such as dogs used for police work and search and rescue operations, race horses, etc, each play a significant role in society. The proper and efficient veterinary care of these and other animals is very important.
The administration of pharmaceuticals, such as antibiotics, anti-inflammatory agents, anti-viral agents, vaccines and wormers, are important to the health of these animals. Typical methods of administering pharmaceuticals to animals include vascular injections, muscular injections and oral administration of liquids or pills. Disadvantages of these known pharmaceutical delivery methods include difficulty in administration, pain to the animals, difficulty in measuring the dosages when liquids or pills are added to animal feed, since, for example, some time a number of animals will share a common feed container and animals will sometimes try to spit out medicine.
It would therefore be desirable to provide a delivery system for effective agents which is easier to administer. It would also be desirable to provide veterinary delivery systems which have a higher dose delivery accuracy than previous feed-mixed delivery systems.
It would also be desirable to provide a veterinary pharmaceutical delivery systems that can be at least partially absorbed into the animals vascular system through mucous membranes while other portions are ingested.
It would also be desirable to provide methods for delivering agents effective in the care of animals which provide quick efficacy, are easier to store, have longer storage shelf lives and which are less prone to being spit out by the animal receiving the effective agent.